


Literary Allusions

by Corpse_Grl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1710560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corpse_Grl/pseuds/Corpse_Grl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Sherlock Holmes, people are as easily read as story books - Somewhat of a character study. Mostly a drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Literary Allusions

When he was bored, and feeling particularly poetic, Sherlock would liken his deductions of people to reading books. He had purposefully drafted his own text to be mysterious and difficult to read. Essentially, Sherlock Holmes was an obscure tome written in a dead language for reasons only few would ever know or understand. Reading most people was painfully simple and dreadfully dull. They were like cheap romance novels that got abandoned in waiting rooms and train stations. Children were worse, like magazines, flimsy and frequently unreliable because they changed so quickly. The clients and criminals of his casework brought him some of the most absorbing tales. He craved their stories, using serial killers to stave off the boredom like some people read science fiction.

Completed novels were stored neatly on bookshelves in a mental library for future reference and enjoyment. A small collection of individuals (Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade) served as personal references; some good, some decidedly not. Sherlock enjoyed those that were constantly evolving, as if they were still being written. When he first met the John Watson, he had instantly read a great deal of the military doctor's backstory, but Sherlock recognized a complexity there. Tackling the psychosomatic limp chapter would be very entertaining, so he acquired a flatmate for the value of having an interesting read close at hand at all times. Sherlock didn't realize though that John was more a textbook, showing him things about the world he did not know and teaching him how to become better at it. John enhanced his life and he learned the doctor was as indispensable to solving crime as the London A to Z.

Initial impressions of Molly Hooper were that she was a standard text with information regarding one subject, pathology. When he met her years ago in the morgue, he had read her easily and had filed her as useful but not much more. Molly's footnotes of affection were handy though as they made it so easy to manipulate her. He thought he knew all there to know of her, until lost in his own story with Moriarty, he encountered a plot-twist.

Molly saw him and was learning to read him as well. She was surprisingly clever and over the years of interacting with him, had learned to interpret him in ways others could not. True she hadn't gotten the whole story yet, but she could read small parts, and that was intriguing. Only Mycroft had previously had any ability to decipher some of Sherlock's prose before. What did that make her now? Was it possible that his interaction with her had interleaved their stories in such a way that it was now something different? She had helped him in the most important task of his life, and subsequently, his death. That meant something, it certainly meant he trusted her on a level with John, maybe more. It was impossible to categorize her.

If people were books, their lives written by their actions in the world, could it be possible that Molly Hooper was the next chapter in his?

**Author's Note:**

> NB: I'm not really sure what this is to be honest. It started out with a bit of a character study and an idea to liken the people Sherlock meets to forms of literature. Part of a one-a-day challenge. Comments and critique are welcome, I'd love to know what you think. - CG


End file.
